Barrie Pettman
Publishing entrepreneur who was president of Burke’s Peerage
BARRIE PETTMAN, who has died aged 73, was a publishing entrepreneur, management guru and musical philanthropist.
A professor of management science, Pettman put his beliefs into practice as a business creator in the field of academic publishing and beyond. After launching his own ventures, he joined forces in the late 1960s with academics at the University of Bradford who had formed their own company, Management Consultants Bradford.
This evolved into the Emerald group, a successful publisher of academic journals. Pettman became its chairman and a driving force alongside its co-founder Dr Keith Howard. He also served as editor of titles such as the International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy and Equal Opportunities International, and founder director of the International Institute of Social Economics.
He wrote books on industrial relations and in 1999 – having amassed a modest fortune – he was co-author of What Self-made Millionaires Really Think, Know and Do, a “straighttalking guide to business success and personal riches”.
A man of sharp intelligence and mischievous opinions, Pettman appeared to thrive on a diet made up largely of pork pie, red wine and Scotch whisky. He and one of his business partners, Gordon Wills, developed a side interest in Scottish feudal baronies.
Wills duly became Baron of Prestoungrange in East Lothian, and in 1999 Pettman acquired (from Sir David Hope Dunbar, 8th Bt) the barony of Bombie, a farming hamlet near Kirkcudbright. Thereafter he caused some confusion by styling himself “Baron of Bombie” on all formal occasions. The same enthusiasm led Pettman and Wills in 2000 to acquire the publishing rights to Burke’s Landed Gentry and later Burke’s Peerage.
Pettman’s special contribution was Burke’s Landed Gentry: The Ridings of York Including Contemporary Yorkshire People of Distinction (2005), in which were included a selection of the county’s sons and daughters ranging from Liz Dawn (Coronation Street’s Vera Duckworth) to Jimmy Savile and (against his wishes) the deputy prime minister John Prescott.
“I can’t conceivably see that there’s money in it,” Pettman said of the Burke’s venture, of which he became president. Likewise “for fun” he owned a restaurant and an oil delivery business.
Barrie Owen Pettman was born in the Holderness district of the East Riding of Yorkshire on February 22 1944 into a family with antecedents in the local fishing industry. He graduated from Hull University, and went on to join the first cohort of postgraduate students at what is now the Cass Business School in the City.
He returned to lecture in industrial relations at Hull from 1970 to 1982, with a secondment to the University of Rhodesia in 1978-79. Pettman listened to classical music in his office, and became a passionate supporter of Opera North.
He was a donor to the company’s appeal for the refurbishment of the Leeds Grand Theatre, where a room is named after him, and in 2010 he established the Pettman Dare scholarship scheme for students from the EU and New Zealand to work with Opera North while studying at Leeds University. He also supported the Buxton Festival and the East Riding of Yorkshire Choir.
Pettman and his wife Maureen divided their time between his estate at Patrington in Holderness – where he developed a nine-hole golf course – and a winter home at Akaroa in New Zealand. There they sponsored the Pettman National Junior Academy of Music and a fellowship for New Zealand students at the Cass Business School.
Barrie Pettman married first, in 1977, Heather Humble. The marriage was dissolved and he married secondly, in 1987, Norma Edwards. She died in 1991, and he married thirdly, in 1992, Maureen Watson, who survives him.
Barrie Pettman, born February 22 1944, died June 2 2017